FieldNotes
Our daily Field Notes email is just the kind of jumpstart you need. A fast read. Maybe less than a minute. Because sometimes it just takes one insight to change the trajectory of the day.
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Are You An Independent Thinker?
Are you an independent thinker? Here’s a simple test. If someone knows your age, leadership position, salary, political party, or zip code, can they predict your beliefs across a variety of personal, social, and organizational topics?
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Do You Project the Identity You Want To?
Whether a leader wants others to draw inferences about them or not, people interpret everything they do as evidence about who they really are. Their character, personality traits, values, and tendencies are revealed to others with every breath and action. Over time, people draw distinctive conclusions as to what makes a leader tick and who…
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How to Create More Commitment to Decisions and Tasks
When team members are committed to a decision or task, they become energized. Their performance, judgment, and follow-through all get a boost. Commitment is jet fuel for an increase in team and team member effort and focus. It’s the secret ingredient all leaders want more of. The question is, How? Academic research on increasing commitment
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Identifying the Levels of Team Member Commitment
Contrary to what many team leaders believe, team member commitment is not binary. Team members aren’t “all in or out” as much as their commitment is relative. Understanding that commitment exists along a continuum is essential for creating more of it. When leaders engage in behaviors that move people along the ladder of commitment, they…
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When is Conflict a Sign of Team Health?
When Is Conflict a Sign of Team Health?
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Make Yourself More Interesting in the New Year
It should come as little surprise that those leaders with great relationship skills also tend to be highly interesting people. People pay more attention to, spend more time with, learn more easily from, bond more deeply with, and remember more fondly those they find more interesting.
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Why Become an Exceptional Leader
Strong leadership is a force multiplier. It doesn’t just shape the lives of others but helps the leader to build resilience, problem-solving skills, and emotional intelligence that benefit all areas of their own lives. But leaders don’t become great for themselves. They are driven to make people and situations better through their decisions, messages, behaviors,
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Expanding Your Options
When it comes to decision-making, a small option set typically results in inferior or lower-quality decisions. Studies show that leaders and decision-makers too often grab the first idea and then spend their energy justifying it. This dramatically increases the odds of failure.
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An Unhealthy Deference to the Org Chart
When asked, after the fact, why a team member didn’t step up, say something, or act more courageously, a common refrain is that they didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, especially those of their leader. Some team members maintain such a high deference to status and positional authority that they don’t believe it is
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How to Lead With Consistency While Adapting to Differences
Good leaders stay committed and consistent to many Whats and adapt and flex around the Hows. They are steady in what they stand for and believe in, while flexible in how they execute and act.